PAPIs Connect Valencia
closed

Key information

PAPIs Connect will take place on March 14-15, 2016 at Universitat Politècnica de Valencia.

The Call for Proposals for the Technical Track is still open.

The Call for Proposals for the Main Track is now closed.

We welcome proposals for Lightning Talks (5’) on all topics related to the conference.

About the conference

PAPIs Connect is Europe’s 1st AI conference for business and IT decision makers, managers, and app developers. It is the sister event to PAPIs, the International Conference on Predictive APIs and Apps taking place annually, with previous editions in Barcelona and Sydney.

PAPIs Connect focuses on how machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) can be used by all types of organizations —from startups to large corporations— to create predictive apps and autonomous systems that solve real problems in business and everyday life. Typical examples are: predictive maintenance, demand prediction for replenishment, priority detection, pricing optimisation, churn detection, task automation, etc.

Presenting at the conference is a great way to share your learnings, showcase leadership on behalf of your organisation, and engage with your peers. We’ve had 520+ attendees come from 25 different countries to our 3 previous events — and even more people watch our talks on our YouTube channel.

Please read these guidelines all the way through for the best chance of having your proposal selected. If you have questions or concerns about anything you see here, please don’t hesitate to email us at cfp@papis.io

Logistics

Talks are 25-minute blocks, including 5 minutes for Q&A.

If your talk is selected for inclusion in our program, you’ll get:

Free registration to the conference

The respect and adulation of your peers!

The opportunity to be paired with a speaker mentor before the conference to help you with talk prep. This will be automatic if you’re a new speaker, optional for experienced speakers, and highly recommended for everyone.

We reserve ticket space for folks whose talks are not accepted, so you can wait on buying a ticket until you hear about the status of your talk.

What are we looking for?

The conference’s target audience is a mix of business and technical types. One way it differs from other ML or AI conferences is in targeting decision makers and focusing on domain-specific aspects, real-world needs and business impact. There will also be a Technical Track for developers and the more technically-inclined attendees, presenting how-tos, techniques, architectures, challenges, tools…

We welcome talks on a wide range of experience levels in business or technical aspects of predictive technology / ML / AI — from beginner-friendly how-tos to cautionary tales to deep dives for experienced professionals.

Here is a list of the types of content we are interested in (you don’t need to have all of them in your proposal):

your predictive use cases; in particular…

the data you’re dealing with, how you collect/extract it

how you measure and monitor performance (offline and live)

stories of what you did, how, and lessons learnt while using/building predictive technology (do’s and dont’s); in particular…

what makes your work novel

problems / challenges you’ve overcome or are currently facing

how you architected what you built and why

which results you got

how people are using what you’ve built and how it’s creating value for them

Benchmarks / comparisons between technical solutions (commercial and open source)

Open Source: projects which make it easier to process data, to create and experiment with predictive models, or to operationalise them with APIs

How do I write a good proposal?

Thank you for making it this far. :) We will be receiving lots of proposals covering the same topics. They will be evaluated by our committee on the basis of their novelty and/or significance and/or clarity of presentation. Reading the following will help you craft a proposal that stands out.

Start with a topic of interest to our audience (see above). Attendees have different levels of experience — from totally new to very experienced. Your talk should either directly help them, or inspire/inform them about something they don’t already know. The core value to our attendees of what you’re presenting should be clearly stated in your proposal. What will they be able to do after they see your talk that they can’t do now?

We believe that great presentations should be practical and focused. For instance, instead of presenting something general or showing a portfolio of things you / your company have done, it’s better to show one specific, unique thing in enough detail. Presentations will be 20’ long which is a short time but allows for dynamic talks that keep the audience engaged.

Can I feature a particular tool or product?

It depends… Your presentation should always be centred on real-world use case(s) and provide practical information. The audience will be interested in hearing about practical integration(s) for the use case(s) being discussed, unique features of the tool/product you’re featuring, why you chose it rather than a competitor, and what your critical opinion is.

Make sure you do not turn your presentation into a simple pitch as our objective is to ensure that PAPIs does not turn into a platform for pitching products / services / companies. It is best to submit your proposal early to get our feedback and adjust before the deadline if necessary.

If you represent the company/team behind the product, please contact us before submitting.

Filling in the proposal form

Our proposal form has two fields that attendees will see on the program (title and abstract), and two fields that only our reviewers will see (details and pitch). Below are a few more details on each.

Title & Abstract

These are what attendees will see in the program. Title and abstract should be compelling and to-the-point. Tell a story. Why should attendees come to your talk and what will they get out of it?

Details & Pitch

Reviewers will see your title and abstract, and also your details and pitch. Details is a good place to go into more depth about what you’ll cover. It’s a good place to put an outline, reveal the secret sauce, and explain any twists you’ll include in your talk that may not be evident in the title or abstract.

Pitch is a good place to tell reviewers why PAPIs needs this talk, and why you’re the right person to give this talk at PAPIs. How will your talk help the program, or fill a specific need? Why are you excited about this topic? Please take extra care here to refrain from identifying who you are since our first round of review is blind, and we appreciate your efforts to respect that.

Note that you can submit several proposals through our CfP application.